This is a Festival review of My Sweet Pepper Land (2013)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
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12 October
This is a Festival review of My Sweet Pepper Land (2013)
@THEAGENTAPSLEY @camfilmfest the instrument is called Hang...;)
— Si Belle (@si83belle) October 13, 2013
The instrument* carried and played by Golshifteh Farahani (Govend) in My Sweet Pepper Land (2013) is not Kurdish, but was invented in the West (in the States ?) around twenty years ago**. Anyone who is under any other impression has been allowed to think so by the filmmakers, and by an Iranian actress so westernized that it appears that she appeared nude for Madame Figaro.
@THEAGENTAPSLEY u r welcome its from swiss...
— Si Belle (@si83belle) October 13, 2013
Which is not necessarily to say that the film is bogus, but it did not catch my attention, and felt like a spoof of some sort of a western : a man, Baran (Korkmaz Arslan) posted to a border area where he is intent, from his unfinished police station (with flaps of plastic that intervene on the action, and then conveniently tuck themselves out of the way), on asserting the rule of law despite the activities of bandits and of a group of armed Kurdish women intent on preventing them.
Probably hilarity aplenty, but no serious message to be conveyed, other than that the bandits are hypocritical gangsters feigning a religious basis for their wrongdoing, including persecuting Govend, largely because of her support from Baran. Change of profession, but not so far from the owner of the saloon (leader of the dancing troupe, at any rate) in league with the sheriff...
End-notes
* My meagre researches, searching for 'percussion instrument', and then with 'turtle', found not quite what I wanted - just, in filming this clip, someone else who does not know what this instrument is called...
** Readers may now find more, thanks to @si83belle, at Wikipedia (or elsewhere).
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
